


Snowwinne Abandoned Dragon Sanctuary

by orangeCrates



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 04:57:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4508667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orangeCrates/pseuds/orangeCrates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>OUR MISSION</i>
</p><p>  <i>The Snowwinne Abandoned Dragon Sanctuary is the first non-kill sanctuary for orphaned, neglected and abandoned baby dragons. In partnership with the <span class="u">Flying Free Dragon Rehabilitation Centre</span>, we care for and raise baby dragons until they're able to be rehabilitated so they can be released back into the wild. The Snowwinne Abandoned Dragon Sanctuary wishes to see these majestic creatures returned to their natural habitats and to educate the future generation about the dangers dragons face from poachers and the pet industry.</i></p><p> </p><p>Alternately: Malik and Altair run a sanctuary for baby dragons that will one day be majestic and awe-inspiring creatures. For now they just trip a lot and whine when they feel they are not receiving the attention they deserve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snowwinne Abandoned Dragon Sanctuary

**Author's Note:**

> Of course, I couldn't write a story about a dragon sanctuary without making a Discworld reference.

Altair's morning usually began something like this:

It's 6:30am and Altair wakes up like clockwork. It's spring now, meaning it was too hot for Altair to sleep fully dressed and too chilly still for Malik to sleep shirtless so it is Malik's T-shirt that Altair feels pressed against his back while Malik's warm breath, deep and even in sleep fans over his neck. Malik makes a discontented noise and tightens his arm around Altair's chest when he attempts to leave the bed.

There is a furrow in his brow when Altair makes it out of bed that he leans down to kiss away. With a grumble, Malik drags Altair's pillow into his arms, then turns around so his back was facing Altair. He's asleep again by the time Altair puts on a shirt.

He stops by the kitchen on his way out to fill the electric kettle with water and plug it in. Generally at this point, there was a small way in which his mornings could deviate. Either the cat (a pretty grey thing with white socked feet that Malik suspects may be some kind of russian blue mix) will be there or she will be outside. When there are new arrivals, she is more likely to be found sleeping in the pens they used for keeping the new animals away from the rest. Otherwise, she is only found outside at this time of day if there is something wrong.

Her name is Boots.

Today, she is happily making figure eights around his feet as she waited for him to refill her water. She consented to being petted, briefly, before darting upstairs.

There are two matching jackets hanging by the front door, made of the same fire-proof materials as his pants and boots. There are gloves inside the pocket that he pulls on as he shouldered the door open.

The air outside is crisp with the faint scent of morning dew and grass lingering in it. It is early enough that the morning fog still left the world's colours muted as Altair made his way across the field. The stone building where the dragons were kept during the night was large and further away from the house to meet safety regulations (though, really, all the buildings and equipment on the property were fire-proof either through design or from glyphs). Water was dispensed to to dragons automatically, but their food troughs had to be filled manually. There was a second building attached to the stone building, a smaller one where they kept the dragon's food. Altair unlocked the door and went in with a large bucket. He would have to make more than one trip since he was doing this by himself, but that was fine.

They had volunteers at the sanctuary, of course, but Altair liked the morning chore of feeding and checking on the dragons. It was something he had done back when it was just him and Malik trying to make this--all of it--into reality.

It was a reminder of where they had started and how far they had come.

He sets the bucket down in front of the large, heavy-set doors. The surface of it looks like wood (looking like those impressive Medieval castle doors for when they conducted tours of the sanctuary), but the inside of it is metal (to prevent humans trying to break in), with glyphs carved into its surface (to prevent dragons from breaking out). There had been a recent surge in the last decade of dragon poaching. Baby dragons, with their disproportionate feet and wings that made them clumsy were easy targets for thieves. After a near break in a few years back, they'd asked Leonardo to design them a better door.

There are few facilities in the world with a more secure security system than what they had on this building and the smaller one they used to keep new dragons (and yet Boots always found a way in).

Once the door is unlocked, Altair pulls the hood of the jacket up and towers the visor attached to it. Once the door is open he could hear the chattering of the dragons.

Inside the building there was an open area with a feeding trough in the middle that was kept separate from the small space Altair was standing in with a fence. Lining the other three sides of it was a series of smaller pens. At the moment, they're not all full, but the ones that did house dragons were full of that weird chirping sound dragons did before they figured out how to roar or make proper, adult dragon sounds.

Altair pushed open the fence and stepped into the main area to pour the food into the trough.

The baby dragons they kept all ate the same food (except in cases where they had special dietary concerns) because they were all part of the species known as _draco nobilis_ , the fire-breathing dragon often associated with fairytales (the sort that many people imagine when they imagine dragons). They were not the only breed of dragons in the world, but they were the only ones their sanctuary was equipped to take care of. They have briefly housed other breeds, but usually only long enough to have arrangements made to ship them back to their countries of origin.

(Oh, and those were always interesting. Their dragons were difficult to care for, but they knew them and all the little habits of their species at least. They had briefly housed a dragon that was covered in white, downy fur and was no bigger than their thumbs, with a serpentine body and a tendency to duck inside their pockets to hide. There was also that rescue they did with an Asian dragon that was disinterested in anything shiny except for the iridescent pearl it carried around that could summon a storm even indoors.)

As he went back and forth to continue filling it, the dragons became increasingly excited especially when he made detours occasionally to stick his hand over the doors of the pens to pet them.

Once the trough was full, he double checked to make sure the fence meant to keep them in (they won't be let outside until later in the day when it was warmer) was secure (there had been an incident one time when he had forgotten that ended with Malik and him chasing dragons all morning), before he started opening the pens one by one.

These baby dragons were about the size of medium sized dogs, with brightly coloured scales that came in all sorts of colours. Some of them dashed out of the pens and went straight for the trough, while a few bumped their heads against Altair's legs briefly in greeting and mewled at him before scrambling (often times tripping over their own big feet) to eat. One dragon in particular, with pretty sparkling blue scales sat at Altair's feet until he leaned over to scratch the dragon behind his ears (he was secretly Altair's favourite of the seventeen dragons they currently had at the sanctuary).

Then he sits back on a stool they kept in the room and watched the dragons eat for a little while.

~ + ~

Malik's morning usually began something like this:

It is not yet 7:00am. Malik knows this for a fact because his alarm hasn't gone off yet, but he doesn't actually know what time it is because if he opens his eyes their cat (who always invades the bed shortly after Altair leaves) will take it as an invitation to press her wet nose all over his neck and face to beg for breakfast. As long as Malik continues to feign sleep she will leave him alone.

He sighs and curls further around Altair's pillow (that still carried a faint trace of the man's scent), and drifts back into a dreamless sleep--

\--his alarm buzzes on his bedside table, declaring it to be time to wake up. Malik groans and slaps at it blindly as Boots makes her way from where she had been curled up on Altair's side of the bed to climb over Malik. He sits up to avoid her attempts to wake him up.

When he makes it to the kitchen there is already water in the kettle. He pulls out the large french press from the cupboard and measures out the appropriate amount of coffee grounds before filling it with water. The timer on his phone is already set for five minutes so all Malik has to do is find the app and start the timer.

Then Malik gets to feeding Boots and, after washing his hands, started pull out the ingredients he needed to make breakfast.

The timer for the coffee went off sometime after he finished making the omelettes while he was waiting. He presses down on the french press then pours himself a mug of coffee. This one Malik gulps down as he grabes the toast from the toaster to put on the plates. He's pouring himself a second cup when the front door opens and Altair comes back in.

The fireproof jacket is hanging on his arm when Altair leans in to kiss him.

"Breakfast looks good."

Malik's mouth quirks up in a smile, "you'd say that even if it didn't."

"I would," Altair agrees, "because obviously I must have done something wrong if you decided to ruin breakfast." Altair kisses him again before he takes their breakfast and carries it to the table while Malik pours a cup of coffee for Altair as well, emptying the french press of everything besides the coffee grounds.

Conversations during breakfast is dominated a lot by talk of work especially how the dragons are doing this morning. At one point, it segues into a story about how one of the dragons had the hiccups (they were a problem because while it's easy to see when a baby dragon is gearing up to spit fire, hiccups always came as a surprise and then, quite literally, you were suddenly on _fire_ ).

Malik finishes his food first and sits there to savour the last of his coffee (and this moment they've stolen for themselves). When his mug is empty he takes his dishes to the sink. On his way out of the kitchen he leans over to kiss Altair on the cheek. When Altair turns his head to catch his mouth in a proper kiss he tastes like coffee and eggs. 

There is another jacket, just like the one Altair wore earlier that is in Malik's size. He puts it on and heads away from the house and follows the little dirt trail to a small building to the left of their house.

Like every other building on the property, the door is locked and reinforced with fire-proof glyphs. Boots is already pawing at the door as Malik unlocks it.

They kept the hatchlings here and it is often referred to as the nursery. They never get as many dragons of this age compared to the larger ones (which were often abandoned pets), they required more attention in many other ways. Like how the inside of the building has to be kept at a constant temperature year round whenever it is occupied and it is always at least a few degrees warmer than any other building on the property. The one time the heat had failed, he and Altair had brought the hatchlings into the house and turned the heat up and nestled with them under a thick down blanket.

At the moment, they had six hatchlings, four of which had come from the same nest (Malik had been really angry about those. They had been rescued from illegal poachers that had killed the mother to steal her babies for the purpose of selling them). The hatchlings are kept in a large pen in the corner lined with old scraps of cloth. The dragons trip over the folds of frabic and, occasionally, each other to scrabble against the fence keeping them from Malik and Boots. Malik makes sure to close the door securely and head to the refrigerator in the corner to get their food ready. In the meantime, Boots jumps gracefully up the playpen walls. She perches there for a moment before jumping into the pen. The hatchlings quickly settle afterwards.

The four newer hatchlings are about a third her size, but the other two are just as big as Boots. Still, she seems to persist in treating all the dragons on the sanctuary (including the larger ones in the stone building) like they were all especially confused and ugly kittens.

It is what they had hoped for in bringing her to the sanctuary (companion animals like cats were known to help calm baby dragons, especially those who don't trust humans). It did not mean it didn't look strange to see Boots batting at a dragon that was playing too rough as if reproaching it.

Once Malik has all the equipment organized, he heads over to the pen.

"Hello, there." He says as he reaches in to pick up one of the smaller hatchlings, the one covered with purple scales with leathery pink wings. She opened her jaws and nibbled on Malik's thumb (thankfully protected by the thick gloves he wore). He leaves the hood down because none of the hatchlings are anywhere close to the age where they start breathing fire (it would be another two years before the oldest's body will begin producing the necessary chemicals and by then he will have been moved out of the nursery).

He brings her to the work table, where he put the hatchling in a box though she doesn't seem interested in letting go of Malik's thumb. Like one might do with a crab clinging to a finger, Malik merely lets her dangle from his finger before gravity does its work and she lets go. her fingers (tiny, spindly things that will take decades to grow out), spread but can't do anything to stop her fall...not that she had far to fall at all (Malik had been careful about that). She makes discontented noises at him that sounds almost feline (there has been a recent argument springing up about how dragons raised in sanctuaries and rehabilitation centres that made use of companion animals seemed to communicate differently. People's views on it were fairly polarized).

Ignoring it, he calmly drops raw meat into the box with her that she happily tears into.

There is a strange idea the public has clung to, that feeding dragon hatchlings involved milk bottles and hatchlings wrapped in towels. Which is ridiculous. Dragons are not mammals. Why would they drink milk?

He lets her finish before drops another piece in. In the wild, they would be fed together, but without the strength of a real dragon, it would be difficult to stop the hatchlings before they injured each other if a fight broke out. It was safer to feed them one-on-one.

As she eats, Malik does a quick check up on her. He pulls gently at her wings to check that there is no tears or injuries. Then Malik slowly runs his fingers over her scales to check for possible deformities. Her scales are cool to the touch and smooth beneath his fingers. They are significantly softer than the scales of the dragons living in the stone building, but that is because she will eventually shed these thinner scales and grow better ones.

(The shed scales, they will sell for money that will go back into help fund this place so they are not entirely dependent on sponsors and donations.)

She will finish eating before Malik is done, and when she's been fed the appropriate amount, Malik turns her over and checks her belly with firm, careful fingers for strange lumps. She burps and Malik instinctively leans back. But, of course, nothing comes out of her mouth but the faint smell of sulphur and Malik leans in to flick her snout with a finger gently.

She grabs his finger and gnaws on it with single-minded concentration. Malik laughs at her antics before scooping her in his hand and brings her back to the pen.

He does this for each and every hatchling. The larger two he saves for last because of how much more time they take for him to finish with.

When he finally finishes with the last hatchling and drops him back into the pen, Malik leans against the side of the pen and watches the hatchlings play. Some of them rough housing with each other while a few sunggled up with Boots in the corner. When one of them wanders over to where Malik is standing, he lowers his hand into the pen to run a finger over its head with a smile.

The dragons they keep here were never meant to be house pets. When they are old enough, they will be sent away to another facility that's equipped to properly rehabilitate them before they're sent back into the wild. Malik takes care of these creatures knowing they will not be here forever. But it's hard to not become attached. Even though the eight years it took for a hatchling to become a juvenile dragon will pass for dragons like the blink of an eye, it is an awfully long time for humans.

~ + ~

After lunch, they let the baby dragons in the stone building out into the outdoor enclosure (which takes up the most space out of everything on the property). One or two of the dragons seem to have decided this whole process is a game wherein they must hide from the staff trying to get them outside (to where there is fresh air and grass and butterflies they will attempt to incinerate). Given that one of them is lime green and the other is bright pink, and they are looking to hide in a building with limited hiding spots, the game never lasts long (though it does not stop them from trying to do things like stick their head in a bucket as if no one will see the rest of their body sticking out of it).

Once the baby dragons are outside, their pens must be cleaned. This sounds like a more terrible job than playing with the dragons until people realized that a single baby dragon could easily run a fully grown adult human ragged in five minutes. They are like over-energetic puppies in the bodies of little dinosaurs.

This is also the time of day when tours of the facility occurred (which, thankfully, only happens twice a week).

The bulk of the afternoon's work is done by staff, volunteers and the occasional intern. In theory, Altair's responsibilities are supervisory in nature only, but he likes being a part of the process (though he will pass on the tours. That he'd rather to leave to friendlier volunteers and staffs that can politely educate visitors why dragons make terrible pets).

Malik can usually be found in the office building managing the staff there and taking care of paperwork.

This is the time of day where they see the least of each other. In fact, it isn't strange at all for Altair to not see Malik at all from after they eat lunch together until dinner time (and sometimes not until after that) They tried to take their all their meals together, but this was a sanctuary for baby dragons and there was always the possibility that something will crop up and steal all their time away.

Something comes up now, when Malik contacts him over the walkie-talkie everyone who worked at the sanctuary carried (they had the benefit of not relying on a cellphone carrier as well as being darkly coloured and matte so the dragons weren't tempted to steal them).

"Altair, I need you at the front. The dragon won't come out of the truck."

"On my way." Altair dusted off his hands and, after leaving one of the staff members that had been with them for a few years in charge, left. While the baby dragons tended to like Malik because he feeds them as hatchlings, they are more likely to listen to Altair. No one can say for sure why, but Altair's always had an easier time communicating and building a rapport with the baby dragons than Malik did.

It took three minutes for him to run to where the quarantine building was.

"Where's Leonardo?" He asked Malik when he got there, because Leonardo was the vet in charge of seeing to all the dragons on the sanctuary and he could talk a bird out of a tree.

"Stuck in traffic."

The door to the back of the truck was open already and, after pulling the hood up and the visor down, he stepped inside of it.

There is a dragon huddled in a back corner covered in grey scales that was dull and lacking the pearl-like sheen healthy dragon scales should have. Its turquoise wings twitches when Altair came in with slow motions, but seems to settle when Boots (who had been hidden partially hidden by the dragon's limbs and partly by camaflouage), presses herself firmly against its flank and begins to purr.

"Hey," Altair stops far enough that when he holds out his hand, he can't touch the dragon (but if it pushes its head out, it can bump against Altair's hand). "it's okay. You're safe."

Altair thinks this would be easier if he could bring one of the other dragons with him. Dragons were not, in general, terribly social creatures, but he's seen how they are around each other and a dragon would do a lot more to calm this one down than he can. There is no saying what sort of sickness or issues this dragon may have and if another dragon gets injured when they could have prevented it...that's the sort of thing that could them into a lot of trouble.

(It's stupid and he and Malik had argued about this in the past with no conclusion being reached in the end.)

The dragon watches him warily, but then Boots leaves the dragon's side long enough to walk over to Altair rub herself all over his legs as if to demonstrate that this human was harmless. She makes a quick circut around Altair before she walks back over to the dragon (still a baby, really) and rubs her head all over it.

Then, slowly, but surely, the dragon stretches its neck and bumps its snout against Altair's palm.

~ + ~

Malik is glaring at the papers he was working on like he wanted to take it to one of their dragons (and Kadar will always think of the dragons on the sanctuary as Altair and Malik's no matter how much Malik tells him otherwise) and watch how quickly they'd turn into ash.

Kadar is still chewing on his sandwich when he pushes his chair back noisily enough that Malik turns his glare on him. "What is it this time?" He asks after swallowing in order to spare the poor intern who is working in the office today Malik's bad mood. (He never snapped at them. Malik's temper is legendary but he is not and never has been a bully, but his anger is incandescent and though it isn't on purpose, it makes you feel judged for every perceived mistake.)

The papers in Malik's hands are set carefully on the table, but the pinch in his brows, the flatline of his mouth and the anger in his eyes bellies the apparently calm in his actions.

"The dragon that came in today has worms. His owner tied him outside because _dragons are tough_ \--because obviously wild animals never need to take shelter from the rain or the cold." Malik is gesturing as he speaks, furious because sometimes, when the dragons are first moved out of the nursery, they still whine about the cold and try to stick their heads up Malik's clothes seeking warmth. "And what if a dog had attacked it? The dragon would win if it fought but if it kills the dog it will be put down because it's _dangerous_. Why doesn't anyone _think_ before they go do something so stupid?" He slams a hand down on his desk and that makes the intern photocopying flyers nearby jump. "These people buy these dragons, and they're not _house pets_. They steal cutlery and anything shiny and somehow it's 'cute' until you need it back and it won't give it up. Then you get dragons left on the roadside, or chained outside--for what? For being dragons? That's what you signed up for when you bought one except no one does any damn research and then--then they end up _here_ but they wouldn't be if someone had just left them the fuck alone in the first place."

Kadar nods agreeably (because it is true), then says, "And this is why I'm in charge of the website and the Twitter account."

Neither Malik and Altair could be bothered to pull their punches, so Kadar was their public face and voice, the one who, with good humour and small words explained politely why dragons don't make good pets. He even made weekly posts that consists of short, well received things like, "Not having eyebrows because your dragon burped. #CuteBabyDragonThings". (It's a feature Malik is unsure about but Kadar insists will help.)

But that is not the point. 

The point is that Malik needs to be allowed to rant but then Kadar has to find the right place and time to defuse it otherwise his brother will work himself into an angry fit.

Kadar has made an art out of it and the comment draws a scoff from Malik. He goes back to frowning unhappily at his papers, but some of the tension has eased out of his shoulder when he sighs.

"I don't know how you do it."

"Talent." Kadar says flippantly and that pulls a genuine laugh from Malik. 

The fundamental difference, perhaps, is that Malik thinks the people who bought dragons for pets were all hopeless morons. Kadar doesn't think that stupidity was a permanent state of being and if you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar then it makes sense that you will ensnare more people with laughter than insults. Kadar takes another bite of his sandwich. After swallowing he says, "So, I'm going on a date this weekend."

Which is such a strange shift in the conversation that Malik looks up again. "And? What does that have to do with me?"

Kadar rolls his eyes, "When was the last time you and Altair went out?"

Malik is no less perplexed than he was a moment ago. "We go out every weekend--"

"Going to get groceries doesn't count. When was the last time you guys went out, like on a date? And _didn't_ ," he added, "only talk about dragons. See, you don't even have an answer!"

"Shut up." Because he does have an answer, but the last time had been during their college years.

"Look, I'm just saying," Kadar gestured with his sandwich, "take him out on a date. Go see a movie or something. Do something together that isn't about dragons. You're too young to be consumed by your job, Malik. No matter how strongly you feel about it. Go and live a little."

"...get back to work."

~ + ~

Malik is in charge of checking the equipment in the stone building before they turn in for the night, long after the baby dragons have all been ushered inside. They had been allowed to play in the open area in the middle for a while but they are all in their pens as Malik goes into each of them to double check that the water dispensers are still working. The babies that Malik had fed as hatchlings greeted him happily and one of them even tried to follow him out of the pen (she did it everyday and always looks injured when Malik doesn't let her). He lingers there by the pens and pets them briefly before moving on.

Next he checks the food storage, makes sure the system keeping everything cool is working as it should before locking everything up. He double checks the locks are holding up properly before he heads back towards the nursery.

Altair is locking the door to the nursery when Malik arrives. 

"Hey." Altair tries the door before pocketing the keys.

He grins at Malik, "Hey."

They are walking hand-in-hand back to the house when Malik clears his throat.

"Kadar thinks we should go out sometime." He's not looking at Altair but can still feel the weight of his stare as he spoke.

"I think that'd be be nice." Then Altair stops walking because Malik stops (but doesn't let go of his hand). When he turns around, Malik is frowning, "What?"

"That's it? I--we haven't been on a date since we started the sanctuary. And that's all you have to say about that?"

Altair, finally realizing what the problem might be, only sighs and steps up to Malik, putting a hand on his arm, "do you remember when you were still filing papers to have this place recognized as a not for profit organization?" Malik is still frowning when he nods, "we didn't have any help back then. It was just the two of us, your brother and Leonardo. You were working so many hours you were practically living off coffee." Altair smirked, "You used to come back home and you'd pass out on the couch." He pulls Malik closer and whispers the next part like a secret, "then I'd come back from putting the dragons in their pens and I'd find you drooling on your arm."

Malik scowls (and blushes) at the reminder, "you weren't any better! You fell asleep on me once when we were having sex!" The words are hissed, even though there is no one to over-hear them.

Altair only laughs at the accusation, "you've done that too." Then he leans in looking so damn _fond_ that Malik couldn't help but lean in so their noses brushed. "I'm proud of what we've built here, Malik, and I'm glad that we did it together. But," He adds slyly as his hands slide over Malik's arm and down his back, "I wouldn't mind spending more time together either."

When Altair drags him close, Malik only scoffs. The sound tries to be dismissive, but there is nothing but greedy want in the way Malik pulls Altair down to kiss him, "Maybe we can go somewhere when the new dragon is settled."

"Maybe." Altair's hands slide lower and grabs Malik's ass, "Or we can just watch a movie at home. Have something nice for dinner. Then we can go to bed early."

Malik arches a brow at the offer (oh, but he was smiling with pink cheeks), because there is nothing at all about it that is innocent. "As long as you don't fall asleep on me." He says like it was any kind of concession, and Altair only laughs.

~ + ~

This is how their day ends:

It is 10:47pm and they are exhausted from the days' work (as well as other activities), but, after they clean up and get changed, Altair sits with his back against the headboard with his legs bent and parted enough to make space for Malik to sit with his back against Altair's chest. He has a book open (a novel they had picked up from the library on their weekly grocery runs) and they read it together, until Malik is bleary eyed and cracks a yawn. Altair grabs the bookmark from where they'd left it on the bed and slid it in the book.

Then they moved to make themselves ready for sleep.

Malik sleeps curved along Altair's back and smiling into the back of his neck. Altair is warm (he's always warm. It probably has to do with his metabolism) and Malik greedily soaks it up because it is comfortable.

Altair listens to the even cadence of Malik's breathing and draws nonsense patterns on the back of Malik's hand, until they both fall asleep.


End file.
